Question

I have a controller which respond_to format.js, however, most request assume the old format.html still exists and throws a 404 exception. How do I capture all MIME request on the controller and redirect them only to format.js?

Here’s the current controller action

def search
  respond_to do |format|
    unless @search.nil?
      format.js { render :partial => '/search/search_form', :status => 200 }
    else
      format.js { render :partial => '/search/not_exist', :status => 500 }
    end
  end
end

I’m trying to do something like this, (I know this is invalid, just for demonstration).

def search
  respond_to(:html) do |format|
    unless @search.nil?
      format.js { render :partial => '/search/search_form', :status => 200 }
    else
      format.js { render :partial => '/search/not_exist', :status => 500 }
    end
  end
end

Answer 1

If all requests should only be js, just take out the whole respond_to structure:

def search
  unless @search.nil?
    render :partial => '/search/search_form', :status => 200
  else
    render :partial => '/search/not_exist', :status => 422
  end
end

(note: change to 422 unprocessable entity to indicate a semantic problem with the submission. 500 is usually reserved for server errors, as in, crashes, stack dumps, etc)